ABSTRACT
‘Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.’ This, the opening line of The Social Contract, has stirred the heart of many a revolutionary over the past two hundred years. Yet it is balanced in the same book by the disconcerting thought that those who fail to act for the general good of the state should be ‘forced to be free’. This sounds like a licence for oppression given the difficulty of working out what is genuinely for the good of the state. Both these ideas convey the uncompromising nature of Rousseau’s philosophy: he was never afraid to express controversial and even dangerous thoughts. In an age when the convention was to publish such views anonymously, Rousseau wrote under his own name. As a result many of his works were banned and he lived in constant fear of persecution, several times having to flee his home for safety. In the circumstances it is not surprising he became paranoid, ending up believing that he was the victim of an international conspiracy.
